1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the field of dried powders and granulated foods and other powders and granulated substances suitable for home and commercial use. More particularly, this invention pertains to a ruggedly constructed dispenser, having few parts, that may be erected as a free-standing device, or hung from an overhanging surface or mounted on a vertical surface, such as a wall, to dispense these dried powders and granulated foods into a container, such as a cup, for mixing with water for ingestion.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Society has progressed beyond making cups of coffee, tea and the like, by spooning the granular material from a bottle or tin. Today, there are coffee bags, coffee pouches, tea bags that can be dipped in a cup of hot water or placed in a pot through which hot water is passed to make the requisite brew. There are those, however, who desire to make their drink from instantly dissolvable granules such as instant coffee. The prior art contains certain types of dispensers for metering small quantities of these instantly dissolvable granules into a cup or other container for later drinking. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 2,211,452 to Bowman discloses a gravity fed dispensing device comprising disks, scrapers, stationary members, as well as a container and container lid. U.S. Pat. No. 3,211,334 to McShea discloses another gravity fed dispensing device containing more disks, as well as a center mount and other parts.
These prior art devices suffer from some basic flaws. First they are comprised of many parts which makes their manufacturing costs unreasonably high. Secondly, their construction is complex including many springs, nuts, bolts, washers and the like making assembly, cleaning and reassembly time-consuming and generally difficult. Thirdly, the design of the individual parts does not lend themselves to easy molding so that fabrication is difficult. Finally, there is no reasonable method of adjusting the size of the portion of granular material dispensed except to double or triple the serving and either discard some granular material or return it to the container, the latter requiring the whole dispenser be unmounted, disassembled, then reassembled, etc.
Accordingly, there is a definite need for a granular material dispenser comprised of few parts, of rugged and simple construction, that is ,easily used as well as disassembled for cleaning and reassembly, and that has the ability to be altered to change the size of the dispensing portion of granular material.